El Amor Y La Salvación Existencial En Dos Poemas De Pedro Salinas

The recurrent euphoria of the lyric speaker who addresses the mysterious beloved in La voz a ti debida establishes love as the keynote of the work. The poet strives for and falls in love with love itself. Reacting against a tangible world which has no meaning for him, he seeks instead the mysterious and the ineffable, musing on his beloved's reality, searching for that reality, and struggling against a void. This conception of love is manifest in the theme, structure, and images of each poem. In the first verse, “Cuando tu me eligiste” the three moments–before (chaos and confusion), now (vital plenitude and enthusiasm) and after (deception and return to gray uniformity) –are distinguished by varying images and poetic tones. Joy is dominant in the second offering, “Qué alegría vivir / sintiendose vivido!” and is thematically justified because the lyricist's amorous fulfillment prevents the anguish of nothingness and the threat of death, and affirms love's power. The poem's structure is parallelistic, based on the two types of existence. His is unreal and banal; hers is real and meaningful. The movement of the poem leads to the joining together of the lover and the beloved and culminates in their mystic union at the poem's center. The images are ethereal and provide an example of a “poetics of verticality.” (In Spanish)